that watch he’s wearing,” she said. “It’s got to be a Rolex or something. It’s in every one of these.” She pointed at the family pictures. “But he’s not wearing it in the crime-scene shots. She take it off him before we got there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that was a good catch.”
She grinned.
We kept on like that, case after case, until lunchtime. Jen was at her desk, so I asked her if she wanted to eat with us.
“Can’t,” she said. “Have to get this finished.” She went back to work on the warrant-request template on her computer screen.
Because we weren’t pressed for time, I took Lauren to Enrique’s, which was literally on the other side of town. Most days, it wasn’t a viable option because it just took too long to get there, wait for a table, eat, and get back, but I decided to milk the flexibility we were enjoying for all it was worth.
Of course we took my new car.
As I drove, she asked, “Why are you so quiet?”
“What?” I pretended like I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You were hoping with the case coming together and you not being in danger anymore, Jen would come around. Let you off the hook.”
“She didn’t even ask us to bring her something back. If somebody’s working through lunch, we always bring something back.”
“Bring something for her anyway,” she said.
“I don’t think that will fix anything.”
“Sometimes things don’t get fixed. But who doesn’t like free tacos?”
When we got back to the squad room, though, Jen wasn’t there anymore. Dave told us she was out running something down for Patrick.
I gave him the take-out container with the Number Nine Taco Trio combination inside.
“Enrique’s?” he said.
I nodded.
“Thanks, man. I’m starving.”
It felt weird to be home.
Before I went inside, I still followed the ritual of sitting out in the car and checking the video recordings on the iPad. I hadn’t planned on it or even thought about doing it. I’d been too distracted by my shiny new car to think about it.
There was nothing unusual on the camera footage, but I decided that if I kept checking it, I was eventually going to have to name the possum in the backyard.
I’m not sure what I expected to feel. Before the abduction and kidnapping, I’d felt like a prisoner, constricted and captive, anxious for independence. Since the hospital, though, I hadn’t minded the constant presence of others. I thought I had been looking forward to a night of freedom and independence, to having time to do what I wanted without having to consider anyone else.
In the kitchen, I opened the freezer and searched for something to have for dinner. I should have stopped on the way home. None of the frozen meals looked appealing. Well, they never really looked appealing, but now they weren’t even looking tolerable. I found a can of chili in the cupboard, emptied it into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. There were spots of mold on the bread, so I dumped it in the trash and took the chili into the living room to watch Jeopardy!
Half an hour later, feeling pleased with myself for knowing that the first author to have both fiction and nonfiction New York Times number-one bestsellers was John Steinbeck—the mention of his poodle made it too easy—I turned off the TV and practiced banjo for a while. Mostly just scales and finger rolls. It felt like I was starting from scratch. I knew what I wanted to do, but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. I’d fallen into a pattern of practicing every day for a few weeks and starting to feel a bit of progress, then not playing at all for a month or two, only to pick up the banjo again to find that I felt even more awkward and incompetent than I had at the beginning of the last cycle.
The heat of the day had broken when I locked up and set out on a long walk, my first in weeks. I took Appian Way past Colorado Lagoon and cut over on Paoli Way to get closer to the water of Marine Stadium, then did a big loop around Belmont Shore and came back home. Almost two hours.
It felt good to walk again, but I didn’t feel the sense of liberation and freedom I’d been hoping for. Instead, when I got home I felt a pang of loneliness. It wasn’t something I was used to and I didn’t know how